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The 1989 Soviet census, conducted between
January 12-19 of that
year, was the last and alledgedlly the most comprehensive one
conducted in the former USSR. It resulted in a total population of
286,730,819 inhabitants. Not only in that year, but during all its
entire nearly seven-decade existence, the country clearly ranked as
the third most populous in the world, above the United States (with
248,709,873 inhabitants according to the 1 April 1990 census),
although it was well behind China and India.

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In 1989 about half of the Soviet Union's total population lived in
the RSFSR,
and approximately one sixth (some 18%) of it did so in Ukraine. Almost two thirds of
it (some 65.7%) was urban, leaving the rural population with some
34.3%.[1] In this
way, its gradual increase continued, as shown by the series
represented by 47.9%, 56.3% and 62.3% of 1959, 1970 and 1979
respectively.[2]

The last two national censuses (held in 1979 and 1989) showed
that the country had been experiencing a significant absolute
average annual increase of about 2.5 million additional people,
although it was a slight decrease from a figure of around 3 million
by year period 1959-1970. This remarkable post-war increase had
contributed to the USSR's partial demographic
recovery from the significant demographic and brutal bleeding of some 20 million deaths that the
USSR had suffered during the Great Patriotic War (the Eastern Front of World War II), and
before it, a few million more during Stalin'sGreat Purge of 1936-38. The previous postwar census,
conducted in 1959, 1970 and 1979, had resulted in 208,826,650,
241,720,134 and 262,436,227 inhabitants respectively. [2] Just
for the purpose of a simple comparison, the US censuses carried out
at similar dates, between 1960 and 1980, resulted in 179,323,175,
203,302,031 and 226,542,203 inhab.[3]

In 1990 the Soviet Union was still more populated than both the
United States
and Canada, having some 40
million more inhabitants than the USA. However, after the dissolution of the
country in late 1991, the combined population of the 15 former
Soviet republics stagnated at around 290 million
inhabitants for the period 1995-2000. For 2005-2010 that figure has
fallen to 285 million, compared to a growingUS population of
295 and 310 million for those two respective years. In particular,
in the period 1990-2005 there has been a slow but constant
decreasing in the demographic weight of the old Soviet "Slav core"
(comprising Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) and only the population of the some of
the Central Asian
republics (especially Uzbekistan) has experienced an important
increase.

This significant slowdown may in part be due to the remarkable
changes socio-economic that followed the disintegration of the USSR, that have
tended to reduce even more the already decreasing birth rates (which were
already showing some signs of decline since the Soviet era, in
particular among the people living in the European part of the Soviet Union).